Having been amazed by the popularity of the Stieg Larsson Millennium trilogy, given how badly-written and even badly-plotted the books are, I’ve decided I want to start a Crap Book Club.
We could read a popular book and then have some fun slagging it off online or over a drink. For example: what’s the worst or most ludicrous bit of Stieg Larsson? The lengthy description of the tech specs of Salander’s iBook gets my vote for worst bit of writing, and Salander’s boob job is the worst plot development. I mean – she would never do that! I was screaming “Stieg, go back and read book 1 and take notes about Salander’s character and try again.”
I guess anyone can slag off a blockbuster, so extra kudos goes to books which are critically acclaimed, but are, in fact, crap.
Here are some suggestions I’ve already had for a reading list – more please!
- The Millennium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
- The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
- Restless by William Boyd
The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown is way worse than the Da Vinci code.
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I completely agree with you. Another Swedish writer who is way overrated is Henning Mankel. As a matter of fact, I wrote something in my blog about them two, and why they are so awful: http://dinzo.wordpress.com/2010/03/28/crime-sex-and-society-in-swedish-detective-novels/
And, yeah, that bit about the boop-job is certainly a good example of what a bad writer Larsson was.
I quite like Henning Mankell but then I probably enjoy the TV adaptations (all 3 versions) more than reading the books! Will read your blog post – sounds interesting!
Thanks to you, I just got Roseanna by Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö – a snip at £0.99 on the Amazon Kindle store… introduction by a certain Henning Mankell :-)